Keleuthis wrote:I guess I "love to be in love," like Augustine said of himself.

Most of us like to be *in love*. It's part of our psyches. We just need to choose carefully who or what that is...whether it is a person or nature or the universe or an algorism. We need to choose carefully what our passions are.

Joseph Joubert ~~

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory but progress.

“We love repose of mind so well, that we are arrested by anything which has even the appearance of truth; and so we fall asleep on clouds.”

You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.

I agree that our origin never changes, but that's a specific case of: the past never changes.

Name a way in which our origin and our past is capable of changing.

^ This question, huh Wendy? I didn't see this at first.

Okay, well my point was that our origin and past don't change, but I suppose if time travel were possible, you could go back and erase your birth from ever taking place getting yourself stuck in a grandfather paradox. But then again, if Doc Brown from Back to the Future is right, this would only result time fissioning onto a separate branch. You'd still be stuck in a grandfather paradox (Marty's very existence being in jeopardy), but your original origins would still be pinned down to its original position in the grand blueprints of time and space.

Or how 'bout this: if all reality is subjective, then all you'd have to do is erase your memories of your origins and replace them with alternate memories. But subjectively speaking, you wouldn't look back on this as a change, you'd just forget your original origins ever happened and only remember your replacement origins which would not have changed according to your subjective point of view. Then, on the other hand, from the point of view of someone else who remembers your original origins, they would think you've just deluded yourself, and according to them too (from their subjective point of view), your original origins never changed, you've just convinced yourself that they have.

^ That's all I've got for now. Maybe I'll post some more later if I think of anything.

I agree that our origin never changes, but that's a specific case of: the past never changes.

Name a way in which our origin and our past is capable of changing.

^ This question, huh Wendy? I didn't see this at first.

Okay, well my point was that our origin and past don't change, but I suppose if time travel were possible, you could go back and erase your birth from ever taking place getting yourself stuck in a grandfather paradox. But then again, if Doc Brown from Back to the Future is right, this would only result time fissioning onto a separate branch. You'd still be stuck in a grandfather paradox (Marty's very existence being in jeopardy), but your original origins would still be pinned down to its original position in the grand blueprints of time and space.

Or how 'bout this: if all reality is subjective, then all you'd have to do is erase your memories of your origins and replace them with alternate memories. But subjectively speaking, you wouldn't look back on this as a change, you'd just forget your original origins ever happened and only remember your replacement origins which would not have changed according to your subjective point of view. Then, on the other hand, from the point of view of someone else who remembers your original origins, they would think you've just deluded yourself, and according to them too (from their subjective point of view), your original origins never changed, you've just convinced yourself that they have.

^ That's all I've got for now. Maybe I'll post some more later if I think of anything.

You are getting slightly warmer, slightly, gib.

Joseph Joubert ~~

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory but progress.

“We love repose of mind so well, that we are arrested by anything which has even the appearance of truth; and so we fall asleep on clouds.”

You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.

Arcturus Descending wrote:More like a hard nut to crack. I have been told this very often especially by men.Perhaps I have yet to meet my squirrel.

Well, in any case, I seriously can't think of any other way of altering your origins than time travel. I mean, what's in the past is in the past.

But this thread is about one's essence, which is a little different from one's origins, so if you're asking how does one change one's essence, you're asking how does one redefine one's self. <-- I'll meditate over that one and get back to you.

Arcturus Descending wrote:More like a hard nut to crack. I have been told this very often especially by men.Perhaps I have yet to meet my squirrel.

Well, in any case, I seriously can't think of any other way of altering your origins than time travel. I mean, what's in the past is in the past.

But this thread is about one's essence, which is a little different from one's origins, so if you're asking how does one change one's essence, you're asking how does one redefine one's self. <-- I'll meditate over that one and get back to you.

Well, not to so much reveal anything or perhaps I will but I actually did have my origins altered in a sense, in a great sense.I was inadvertently told by my grandparents (and not biological ones) that the man who I had actually believed to be my father, who I had loved and worshiped as my father (since I was too young at the time to know otherwise) since that is what my mother told me ~~ was not actually my father. I was absolutely devastated by that. I lost that *father* not only once but twice. That was revealed to me right after high school graduation. They thought that I knew the truth of my so-called origins. How my origins changed. But that also explained something which happened between myself and my so-called father when I was around six or seven which also devastated me and which probably affected my life in many ways growing up.It was one of the most utmost experiences of abandonment that I have ever had in my life.

.

..so if you're asking how does one change one's essence, you're asking how does one redefine one's self

Hmmm...so you think that changing one's essence is as simple as re-defining one's self? Giving one's self a new self-identity in a sense?I don't know about that.

Joseph Joubert ~~

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory but progress.

“We love repose of mind so well, that we are arrested by anything which has even the appearance of truth; and so we fall asleep on clouds.”

You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.

Arcturus Descending wrote:Well, not to so much reveal anything or perhaps I will but I actually did have my origins altered in a sense, in a great sense.I was inadvertently told by my grandparents (and not biological ones) that the man who I had actually believed to be my father, who I had loved and worshiped as my father (since I was too young at the time to know otherwise) since that is what my mother told me ~~ was not actually my father. I was absolutely devastated by that. I lost that *father* not only once but twice. That was revealed to me right after high school graduation. They thought that I knew the truth of my so-called origins. How my origins changed. But that also explained something which happened between myself and my so-called father when I was around six or seven which also devastated me and which probably affected my life in many ways growing up.It was one of the most utmost experiences of abandonment that I have ever had in my life.

Ah, so this is closer to the "subjective" account I gave earlier. Though I can see what you mean: it doesn't involve replacing memories, but being told a different story about your past.

You must live a life that's anything but ordinary.

Arcturus Descending wrote:

gib wrote:..so if you're asking how does one change one's essence, you're asking how does one redefine one's self

Hmmm...so you think that changing one's essence is as simple as re-defining one's self? Giving one's self a new self-identity in a sense?I don't know about that.

Me neither. It's anything but simple... which is why I must meditate on it... might need a few months atop a snowy mountain in Tibet.

gib wrote:Let's see if I can brush off my memories of what we were talking about.

I know that feeling . . .

gib wrote:Well, I think we can get away with ordinary logician's conditional. If C depends on B and B depends on O, then we're saying: if C then B, and if B then O... which is: C --> B, and B --> O. Of course, that doesn't capture everything you might have wanted to say, does it?

Pretty damn close. I would make up my own, mainly for aesthetics as follows:

O <∫> B <∫> C

I wonder if you can guess what it means . . .

gib wrote:I think we sometimes think of the human brain too much like a computer. We design computers on purpose to be totally logical. We want them to be consistent and accurate. We don't want them to *sometimes* make mistakes or come up with their own opinions.

Strange that . . . I wonder why we do that.

gib wrote:We have to remember that our brains evolved through a process of natural selection, it wasn't designed on purpose. We get things right and we think rationally only to the extent sufficient to get us by. It's amazing how often we make leaps of logic and lucky guesses. We infer so much by instinct. For example, I'm preparing a barbecue, I ask a friend: can you go out and get burgers? I don't need to specify that I mean buy burgers from the grocery store, not kill a cow and gut the meat out of him. How is it that the brain automatically knows the right interpretation?

I would suggest the brain does it from pattern matching and differentiation - I would further conclude that this is also how new thoughts evolve - epiphanies.

gib wrote:It's just conditioned to make these leaps, and good thing because usually it gets it right. And you're right about the emotional readings in the things we say--not to mention tone and special accents that fluctuate in our speech, and inferring meaning based on context, and a whole list of other things. Sometimes this is way more efficient than having to deduce everything logically, for if the chances that we'd get it right with a bit of implicit guesswork are high enough, we could save a lot of time and mental energy that would otherwise be used to do a full logical deduction.

I have witnessed a pattern matching algorithm based on the neocortex make a leap to identify an animal based on a similar animal - and that is not using all six layers - it kind of freaks me out what all six layers are capable of.

gib wrote:I try not to make my spirituality depend on science or conflict with science. My spirituality essentially says that the physical universe that science studies is a material representation of God's mind. This allows science to uncover anything, and I'm still able to say: well, that is a representation of something in God's mind. It doesn't matter what science discovers, or what we read in our science textbooks. I also don't speculate much on what particular experiences or thoughts (I should say "thoughts" in quotes) go on in God's mind, which means I don't put any demands on how such experiences or thoughts must be physically represented, so again, science could uncover anything.

I really like what you have written here.

gib wrote:The only area of science that comes into conflict with my spirituality is quantum mechanics--having to do with non-determinism--but even there, a minor tweak to my theory fixes that.

Yeah - I am not a huge fan of QM. I have also read some data that points to correlation implying causation - that tells me that there is something up with QM.

gib wrote:No need to apologize. I was saying that poetry and metaphor, though requiring a bit more penetrating insight to get, also delivers a bigger punch when it succeeds. Sometimes we need to be strict and rigorous when communicating, but sometimes it's worth using poetry and metaphor.

I am pretty certain the neocortex is involved in processing poetry and metaphor.

gib wrote::lol: Sure, I guess you have to decode your own posts sometimes. That happens to me a lot. I don't think a person's words ever lack meaning. Obviously, when we speak, we have something in mind which we're trying to convey. Sometimes we lose that meaning, we forget or our brains can't quite capture it as it once could, but it's very rarely the case that we intentionally decide to utter a bunch of babble.

I find that if I have put an extreme amount of thought into the post when I write it - then I have to spend some time decoding my own writing.

I did actually make it up when thinking of what I would use based on the original logic . . . fuzzy at that.

O <∫> B <∫> C

<∫> = A stem

The stem is made up of three symbols, the 'less than' sign, the 'Integral' sign, the 'greater than' sign. It just means that what ever is to the left is smaller than that which is to the right but they are integrated.

A plant works the opposite way - the stem is larger than the branches - just an analogy.

I have put so much thought into this post nah, I am just messing with you

Arcturus Descending wrote:encode_decode Yeah!

encode_decode wrote:How do we keep the loonies in check?

Loonies? Yeah loonies . . .

Are they those who need to be put away for their our safety and our own? If you mean that I should be put away then yeah

Aside from that, we keep ourselves in check. We regulate our own behavior.

How do we keep ourselves in check? How do we regulate our own behavior?

Actually I was trying to think up a witty response to this post - I am not sure whether I have achieved that necessarily but I have now made an attempt prior to hitting the submit button. What if I have already hit the submit button and I am just not aware of it? If I have already hit the submit button then how is it possible that the words that I am now typing are making it into this post? And why is it that we only remember the past and not the future? So many questions and apparently I can still ask them after hitting the submit button and I can also laugh . . .

Is this a part of my essence - if so - what is this - and what part of my essence would this be - can we have parts to our respective essences?

encode_decode wrote:Pretty damn close. I would make up my own, mainly for aesthetics as follows:

O <∫> B <∫> C

I wonder if you can guess what it means . . .

I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna look ahead to your response to Arc. You call it a "stem". You say that O is not only less than B but integrated into B. So maybe something like: if it's a dog, then it's an animal. And if it's an animal, then it's a life form.

encode_decode wrote:I think we sometimes think of the human brain too much like a computer. We design computers on purpose to be totally logical. We want them to be consistent and accurate. We don't want them to *sometimes* make mistakes or come up with their own opinions.

Strange that . . . I wonder why we do that.

What? Think of human brains as computers or design computers to not make mistakes or have opinions?

I remember listening to a lecture by John Searle once in which he quoted an ancient greek writer (I forget who): the brain is like a catepolt, he said. Searle's point is that throughout history, we've always compared the brain to the latest, most advanced, technology of the time. Why? Partly because we didn't understand how the brain works (thus comparing it to something "sophisticated" or "complex") and partly because in seeking out an explanation (of anything) we look for mechanical cause/effect accounts. We stay away from magic or spontaneous/causeless accounts because that's more akin to saying "there is no explanation."

But I think with computers, we're not just repeating the same pattern. I think there is something to computers that makes them good for comparison to brains--namely, internal information processing. When we design a computer to carry out complex mathematical algorithms, we are modeling the design after what we see going on inside our minds (introspection). Furthermore, like all other tools, we design computers to perform the tasks that we would otherwise have to do ourselves (laborously). We've built a machine that can solve really complex mathematical and logical problems so that we don't have to go through all the trouble of doing it in our heads (and possibly making mistakes). Therefore, of course the brain is like a computer... because we designed computers to be like brains.

Of course, we've designed computers to model the brain in specific ways only--doing math, solving logical problems, and even doing things like rendering art and running video games--all things that the human brain can do but much better. This more or less addresses the second part above--why we don't design computers to make mistakes or have opinions--because at the end of the day, they're still tools. We design and used them as replacements to our own manual efforts--and not just because we're lazy, but because we make mistakes. We also leave out the ability of computers to form their own opinions because, as tools, we want to have full control over them. We want them to do exactly what we tell them, like mechanical slaves. Programming them to have their own opinions which might conflict with ours (e.g. Me: I want you to allocate $500,000 to defense spending. Computer: in my opinion, I think that money would be better spent on education) is avoided because that too would make them less tool-like and more of an "equal" (who could use us as tools just as much we can them).

encode_decode wrote:I would suggest the brain does it from pattern matching and differentiation - I would further conclude that this is also how new thoughts evolve - epiphanies.

You mean like: please go get [food item X]. <-- This matches past patterns of requests to get food items in which the person went to the grocery store to fulfill the request. And thoughts that evolve--epiphanies--is this the brain doing the occasion break from following patterns? Finding whole new patterns? Like: I *could* go to the grocery store, but if I gut the neighbor's cow, the meat will be a lot more fresh and no unhealthy additives! <-- Or is that more insanity than novel thinking?

encode_decode wrote:I have witnessed a pattern matching algorithm based on the neocortex make a leap to identify an animal based on a similar animal - and that is not using all six layers - it kind of freaks me out what all six layers are capable of.

Wow, that's interesting. How do they scan the brain in order to identify pattern matching?

encode_decode wrote:I really like what you have written here.

Thank you!

encode_decode wrote:Yeah - I am not a huge fan of QM. I have also read some data that points to correlation implying causation - that tells me that there is something up with QM.

Hmmm... well, if you can remember the source, I sure would like to know about this. I took a course in statistics for my psyc undergrad, and I remember one of our projects was to look for studies and find at least 5 in which the authors made really blatant mistakes like that. You'd be surprised how many articles out there draw causal conclusions based on a correlation only. It wasn't hard to find all 5. Other mistakes included "fudging" statistical significance--as in: their study could not prove that their conclusions had a 99% chance of being right so they lowered the standard to a 95% chance of being right. Or increasing the sample size: did you know that you can prove a correlation exists between any two arbitrary variables you want so long as your sample size is large enough? (whether that correlation is positive or negative is another matter).

Anyway, back to QM, if they're really scrupulous about being scientific, then the way you establish a cause (and not just a correlation) is by setting up the experiment so that you clearly have a dependent variable (the effect) and an independent variable (the cause). The assumption is that the independent variable has its own cause which determines it (you!) leaving no other option than to identify the independent variable as the cause of the dependent variable. Philosophically speaking, you could question this assumption, but it seems reasonable enough to me to justify the identification of a cause. So long as QM experiments are adhering to this design, I'd say they are in the right to identify the independent variable as the cause.

I would not doubt that. Though I would expect many parts of the brain to be involved in processing poetry and metaphor. I'd also point out that the neocortex constitutes a huge portion of the brain, so it's probably involved in a whole bunch of mental processing (in fact, it's been proven). How it processes poetry and metaphor is a more interesting question (at least for me) and I'm sure you're on the right track in your investigations into pattern matching.

encode_decode wrote:I find that if I have put an extreme amount of thought into the post when I write it - then I have to spend some time decoding my own writing.

Well, that certainly makes sense. Makes me wonder: do you think this is typical of people who form their thoughts and opinions "on the fly" so to speak? As opposed to people who draw from long held beliefs and opinions that have remained more or less "solid" over the years. In the latter case, I would expect those people to know exactly what they were talking about even when revisiting old posts after a long period of absence. But if you form your thoughts and opinions more or less "on the fly" then they're more likely to be ephemeral, and you most likely won't remember what you were thinking if you came back to the post after a long period of absence.

gib wrote:Me neither. It's anything but simple... which is why I must meditate on it... might need a few months atop a snowy mountain in Tibet.

Well, I've come down from my mountain and here's my initial thoughts:

What does it take to change one's essence? I think one's essence is just what one is--at the core--and since I personally believe nothing is permanent, that things are always changing, it only makes sense to talk about one's essence in the moment. However, it would also be fair to say that the change we undergo may be so gradual that we can get away with talking about our essence over an extended period of time. There is also the fact of recurrence, which I spoke about before, which is the idea that our essence--the core of our being--is not something constant but something that keeps recurring--personal tastes, memories, my image in the mirror, hearing my name--all these go towards my self-concept and my essence because they keep repeating for me, and maybe we can talk about our essence as the general "flavor" that all these recurring experiences or states mix together to become--like the "essence" of a pixel flashing on a screen between red and yellow might be "orange".

But I always like to argue from a subjectivist point of view--I like to trace the things in our world back to first person experience. If we indeed have an "essence", I trace that back to concepts--self-concepts, self-identities--how we define ourselves, as I pointed out earlier. I can understand Arc's point that if we're talking about self-definitions, we're talking about something that seems to be on the surface--how we think of ourselves on a conscious level--and one's true essence must be something deep within the core of our being. But I disagree that thought and the definitions we give to things (including ourselves) is at the surface; I think our minds are the core of our being--including all our thoughts, all our emotions, all our memories, all our desires, all our pains and pleasures. It is the source from which thoughts and the definitions we give to things spring. We imbue things, including ourselves, with whatever definitions we give them, and this for us constitutes their essence. I'm opposed to the idea that the core of a thing, its fundamental identity, is always necessarily hidden. We are our own core, and the proof of this is precisely that we are exposed to ourselves.

But my subjectivist views are not the only views out there. If you're a strict Platonist, for example, you would say that one's essence isn't just reduced to one's self-definition. An "essence" to a Platonist is just as real, just as objective, and just as independent of human thought as are rocks, shoes, and tin cans--only they don't subsist as physical bodies, but rather the "metaphysical" or "spiritual" identity of things, the abstract identity of things that we see with our minds, not with our senses. An essence is whatever it is that resides within a thing to give that thing its identity--what makes a chair a chair, what makes a house a house, what makes my phone my phone. This supposedly doesn't change just by my re-thinking it. My phone doesn't cease to be my phone just by my redefining it. And so too with the self.

^ I've never really been a strong adherent to Platonism, but I can't really account for where I'm coming from unless I also explain things from opposing points of view. Sometimes a bit of contrast makes the things being contrasted more clear.